


In the Better Past

by midinvaerne



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Brothers, Camping, Drabble, Gen, Hunting, Music, One-Shot, and a probably unexpected killjoy paragraph, attempts at some humor, deadpan Caranthir, how maglor and maedhros were melancholic even during happy times, staring at stars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-30
Updated: 2015-12-30
Packaged: 2018-05-10 10:35:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5582398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midinvaerne/pseuds/midinvaerne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yet another one-shot/drabble prompted by Tumblr! I do requests (find me on Tumblr as burningvessel). Maglor and his brothers spend an evening in the woods on a little family trip, and he, together with Maedhros, talks about work, worrying, and memories.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Better Past

**Author's Note:**

> PoV: Maglor  
> Person: 3rd

Just like when they were little. He picked the harp up again, his fingers strumming against the notes with the elegance and finesse of a leaf, drifting through the wind, or the flight of a butterfly in the night. The thin wail of a fiddle sounded from his left, and a lute would join them on the right mere moments after; a very melodic trio, indeed, picking up the chords of a brisk, lively, but not graceless tune. Not quite so loud as to disturb the silent woods, oh no; not quite so silent as not to echo within the darkness between sparks and stars, oh no. And a great thing it was, truly, a song.  
The fire crackled in rhythm, as if only meaning to add to the carefree atmosphere with its dance. As fleeting as the moment was, he’d commit it to memory and treasure it - it had been long since they had been this way, all together around a fire. The smell of a roasting doe drifted towards the distant skies, as much as the juice from its tender meat dripped down into the flames every now and then; courtesy of the twins and Tyelko, and near ready to be eaten by now.   
It’s been two days.   
His boots were dirty, and his braids tousled, but he had been happier at heart than he had been for a long time, though a sense of melancholy managed to penetrate this fragile contingent happiness even then, throwing the knowledge that this will all pass straight at his head. He disregarded it. Denial, temporary as it might have been, had long since become part of his mastery. And for the moment, he was ready to discard discontent thoughts in favor of a song.  
At first, his voice had been silent; merely a part of the weaving melody, and difficult to distinguish from the drawn sounds of the fiddle. Only with time it grew louder, outshining the instruments in the manner in which one word contained more than a single note, more than a single existence.

The lute dropped a few misjudged chords, and a suppressed chuckle eventually became more prominent than its play, which died down in the matter of moments. The fiddle quieted down as well, leaving only a mildly confused and disapproving Curufin in place.   
To his left, Celegorm was choking on his own laughter, the lute forlorn in his lap.   
He narrowed his eyes.  
“What’s so funny?” A pinprick of doubt echoed through his voice.  
Curvo grinned.   
That little ember of doubt grew. Maglor put his harp down onto his crossed legs, eyes skimming over his brothers. Now, Curufin was chuckling, too.  
“Kano?” He spoke with a silk-smooth voice that most obviously hid something. “Have you ever looked into the mirror while singing?”   
“No-” Canafinwë begun, slightly pulling back, but he was interrupted by a howl of laughter from Celegorm.   
“You sing with your eyes up!” He wrapped an arm around Huan’s throat, eyes nearly tearing up. “Except for Turukáno, I can’t remember ever seeing something so dramatic!”   
Maglor sighed deeply, and fought the urge to bury his face in his hands. What exactly was he expecting?   
“That’s not extraordinarily entertaining.” he remarked dryly.   
“Don’t lose any sleep over it, we have a thousand things to laugh about when it comes to them, too,” Nelyo chimed in, leaning back from his spot by the fire, a little smile on his lips.   
He chuckled wryly. “Yes, that… Is probably true.”

“Tyelkormo, Curufinwë, we are adults.” it was the deadpan remark of Caranthir, who had sat quietly through the entire dramatic experience, that made the two quieten. But only for a little while. Celegorm whispered something to Curufin, and the chuckling continued.   
“I wouldn’t be so certain.” Maedhros was more of a withdrawn overseer than a part of the foolery again, and his observation had been nothing but justified for this time. “Not with those two.”   
“That might be true,” Moryo gave the pair a meaningful look, “but this way, they’ll lose all the best pieces of dinner.” And somehow, he managed to be nonchalant all along.   
Kano couldn’t stifle a snort when he cut a steaming hot piece of venison off, placing it on a thick slice of bread and savoring the rich, earthy aroma.  
“I heard that!” Celegorm yelled, darting over to fight for his dinner.   
The second time, it was less of a snort, and more of a full-out bout of laughter.

“I think I ate too much.” Amras muttered, propping his head against Maglor’s shoulder as he listened to his older brother playing the harp silently. It was little more than running his fingers over his strings, really; it was long past midnight now, and the fire was slowly diminishing. Maedhros was just in the process of telling how he and a couple of his best men had managed to catch a large group of orcs in the mountains. Quite atypically, the rest of their little company was almost completely silent.   
“You will sleep that off.” with an encouraging smile, Kano patted the strands of coppery hair on his younger brother’s head. “We have a few more days.”  
“...We chased them to a narrow valley. We were not on horseback, but we had been pursuing them for a long time already, and we were relatively light, unlike them. We shot some on the way, and ran the rest down till we reached a cliff, and a deep gorge beyond it. Those that escaped the sword fell to their death.” His voice faded out.   
His approach was pragmatic, without joy or pleasure taken in the act they had committed, but without needless grief given to it, either. Even Maglor let his harp go silent at last.   
Tyelko took a swig from his wineskin, nudging Moryo with his elbow. “Tell us something, too. We have heard something from everyone but you and Kano already, if you don’t count the singing. How is it… With the Naugrim?” He leaned against Huan’s massive slumbering body, wound in a protective embrace around his back, softly stroking the hound’s large head. Luckily enough, he wasn’t quite drunk, and it did not look like it was his aim for the night to be.   
“Quite peculiar, for you to ask about what I had been doing. Do you need money?”   
There was an eruption of laughter, and even Amras stirred from rest. Only Celegorm’s smirk had been venomous.   
“No, thank you, I find that I have plenty at the moment.” He retorted smugly.   
“Hear, hear!” Kano perked up. “Are we sure this is certainly Turcafinwë Tyelkormo that sits by the fire with us, and not an impostor?”  
The salves of laughter returned in greater strength.   
Amrod leaned in, picking up one of his platinum braids and sniffing it.   
“Smells like dog. It must be the real thing!”   
Maglor snorted, “Oh, that definitely settles it.”   
But before the whole conversation would have a chance to diverge from Caranthir, Curufin pierced the laughter with the sharp sound of his voice.   
“Does that mean that all is prepared to hear Moryo’s - no doubt hugely entertaining - tales of dwarves, economics and finance?”  
“This family will never be prepared for anything,” Carnistir muttered under his breath, prompting a bitter smile from Nelyo, and leaned back against the tree-trunk he had previously sat on.   
“So far, everything is going favorably, and we are gaining consistent profits on mining and smith-work.” He proclaimed calmly in a far louder voice. And that was the end of it.   
“And?” Celegorm inquired further.   
“And what? Nothing else has happened since we last met.” For a moment, Moryo seemed even dismissive, but it was easy to distinguish that as nothing of ill nature, but rather an inborn dislike for gossip and idle chatter.   
“That cannot be true. Even in Nargothrond something happened, even though it had been merely Findaráto bringing in another batch of awful Atani garments.” Curufin remarked smoothly.   
“That isn’t much of a ‘something, Curvo.” Maglor decided to step into the conversation again. In all honesty, even he was a little bit curious about Caranthir’s current endeavors.   
“You say that,” Celegorm, toying with the buckle of his belt, raised himself a little higher on his elbows, “because you haven’t seen it. If you had, it would be more than just ‘something’.”

They never found out more about whatever was currently going on in Thargelion.

Eventually, Celegorm and Curufin had fallen asleep with Huan serving as a pillow; Tyelko had gone as far as to lend his cape to the twins, who went to sleep by the hound’s back. Carnistir had tended to the fire and made sure their dinner would not be eaten by scavengers, later taking out his blades to begin polishing their long, slightly curved blades; and while Maglor pondered upon the composition of the song he had had in the works for two months already, Maedhros had silently stared into the fire.   
He noticed it; few things went unnoticed by him in the silence of the night that stretched over their heads like a sheet of satin, sparkling with the specks of burning diamonds, the beautiful stars above.   
Quietly, he moved forwards, sitting just by his elder brother’s side.   
“Is anything the matter?”   
Nelyo’s eyes were full of the reflected fire when his gaze parted from the hungry tongues of flames, and for a moment, he was Maitimo again, young and flawless as he had been in Valinor, every scar smoothed away by the fresh night air.   
He shook his head. “No, and it is a relief to be able to say so. I am… Tired, but in a better way than I had been for a long time.” Once more, his eyes regarded the flames.  
Maglor watched them, too.

They were beautiful in their own way, yes. So unpredictable and fast, an element of nature for certain; one that could not be truly subject to their whim and fancy. They kept dancing, spitting out little sparks of embers, all the while the night sang silently.  
The nights in Beleriand sang differently than the nights in Valinor. The wind did not taste the same, and the flowers that opened to greet the moon were different, too, but the probably greatest difference was in the light. Of course, nothing could be like the light of Telperion, and the Moon itself was just a pale imitation, beautiful as its glow was. Now, it was nowhere to be seen, hidden away behind treetops. However, there were the stars, and he suddenly remembered every tale their grandfather had told him about the first great journey of the Eldar. He could see them among the constellations, among the glimmering dust on the sky, and in the manner he wistfully regarded them, too.   
Beautiful, beautiful stars.   
Eventually, he nodded. “It’s good to be all together after a while.”   
Even though it couldn’t be like that forever, but those thoughts he swallowed.   
Nelyo crossed his legs, resting the weight of the mithril hand that glimmered in place of his own on his knee. “And it’s easy to forget how it feels.”   
“You are the lord of Himring.” A small crease formed between Kano’s brows as he slid the stray strands of his hair behind his ears. “No one may blame you for being busy, or tired.”   
“Then who might we blame that we see each other once in a blue moon, brother?”   
His lips pursed into a tight line.   
“Not each other.”

Eventually, he shook his head. “How obsessed by work do I have to be to think about it on the only family trip we may get this year?” A wry smile curled his lips into a crooked crescent, but Maglor wrapped his arm around his shoulders, and pulled him tightly towards himself.  
“How many times do I have to tell you? Stop worrying.” His grip on his brother got a little stronger, and he shook him for good measure.  
Maedhros chuckled a little. “So that you may worry for the both of us? As if I’d let that happen. Do not even imagine it.” And this time, his smile was hopeful, not bitter.   
“Exactly what I had in mind.” Macalaurë began pulling the strands that bound his hair into three orderly plaits out, instead letting the mess of black waves cascade onto his back freely like a flood of dark waters in a starless night. He bent his head back, feeling the breeze toy with the strands.   
“You can do mine, too.” Nelyo flicked the thick braid over his shoulder, removing the little piece of leather that bound it at the end. Maglor’s hands wordlessly bore into the silky coppers, here and there weaved through with white. It had been disquieting the first time he had seen the pale strands, but with time, he had grown used to them. Just… A different form of scars, or was it?   
He had undone the braid slowly and gently, taking the time to divide the strands and spread them over his brother’s back.   
“Thank you.”   
As if the night had not wanted them to speak loudly.   
“Times like these, it’s almost shamefully easy to forget everything, is it not?”   
For the littlest of moments, Kano stared at his brother with wide eyes, struck by surprise, but when they narrowed again, he slowly nodded. Surprisingly enough, it was the truth. Their heads were full of better things than death and strife, and everyone needed to lay the burden down from time to time, if only for a while. But it was not shameful.  
“It is. Perhaps, we should take that as a blessing, and not as a fault of our minds.” He answered.

Another long while passed. Maedhros folded his cape into a small square and lied down, and when Maglor looked over their little encampment, he could see that Caranthir had gone to sleep, too. But his eldest brother was not asleep; his eyes were lively, and staring up at the stars.   
Like mirrors.   
With a deep sigh of relief, he did the same, using his arms in place of a pillow.   
“Do you remember seeing the stars for the first time?” Nelyo asked after a while.  
He did. He remembered visiting Alqualondë and catching sight of the stars for the first time, how enraptured he had been…  
“No.” The whisper parted from his lips.   
“I do. From the tower. Only then I understood what grandfather had had in mind when he spoke of them, and how they had charmed our kin when they woke up. How otherworldly they must have seemed to a people that had known nothing of the world at all.” Despite how quiet his voice had been, little more than a sight, it carried a lot of weight. He smiled a little, folding his hands at his chest, the pale, scarred one, and the carved metal alike.   
“I do not wonder. There are few words to capture them, if any.” Kano agreed after a while.   
The grass rustled around them, and there had been more stars on the sky than they could ever count, even if they counted for a thousand nights.

A sudden flash of whiteness crossed the sky, and a falling star appeared among the countless motionless ones.   
“Make a wish, Nelyo.” he remarked with a little smile on his lips.   
“I did.” the response came in a whisper. “I did.”

The sea threw him up.  
It did not want him, he was unwanted, he was unasked for.   
He heaved, tasting the salty water in his airways, climbing onto the darkened shores among sand and debris. Drenched to the last hair, and regaining conscience only in broken shards.   
It burned him, the coldness of the ocean that wound itself around his skin and invaded his lungs, biting into him. The sand rubbed against his raw, scorched hands, red marks left on the dark shores. Another wave crashed over his head, sending him slipping and choking deeper into the shallow waters, and then forced him back up, throwing the shreds of his clothes all over him.   
Just a particularly beautiful memory.

**Author's Note:**

> Celegorm ruins fun and... I'm really not good at 'happy', am I? I just had to ruin it. I had to, really, I couldn't help myself. If that little twist at the end surprised you... I'm sorry, but writing happy is so, so difficult...


End file.
